Schaumburg's 3-point shooting sinks Batavia

Talia Torosian matched a personal-best seven three-pointers and Schaumburg rallied past Batavia, 51-42, during the final game of Monday's MLK Conference Challenge at Batavia.

"I didn't even know how many I hit in this game, I thought maybe I had six," Torosian said. "The last time I hit seven 3s (Dec. 27 vs. Waubonsie Valley) they were also in a zone and did the same thing where they started guarding me once the damage had already been done."

Schaumburg drilled 12 three-pointers, and as soon as Torosian saw the Bulldogs in a zone, she began to salivate.

"I love zones," she said. "That's a shooter's dream defense. I'm going to keep on shooting them if they don't guard me."

Batavia (7-13) started strong and led by as many as nine points before taking a 26-19 lead at halftime, but the Bulldogs only scored 16 points in the second half.

"For whatever reason, I don't think we were all together tonight," Batavia coach Kevin Jensen said. "They did a nice job of switching from man to zone, which Xs and Os was a good play for (Schaumburg coach Jacqie Strauch). We were struggling to make any kind of shot from the outside."

Schaumburg (6-11) opened the third quarter by outscoring the Bulldogs, 14-7, as Torosian knocked down three of her 3-pointers during that run to draw the game even at 33-33.

"You've got to knock them down when you are open, but man did we leave them wide open," Jensen said. "At some point, it's a little different if a girl is hitting some contested 3s, but it was wide open 3 after wide open 3 and that's more about us then about them as far as I'm concerned with us fixing our rotation."

Batavia didn't relinquish the lead until midway through the fourth quarter when Alyssa Orozco buried her third 3-pointer of the game to give the Saxons their first lead of the evening at 41-39.

"I feel like (Alyssa) and I have been trying to work better together and I think it's starting to show more and more," Torosian said. "I don't think we felt any different. My warmups were normal. I was making some and missing some."

Jacque Schroeder had Batavia's only basket in the fourth quarter with 6:19 left to play.

"I felt like we were coming off a really good win on Friday (against St. Charles North), but for whatever reason we were a little distracted tonight unfortunately," Jensen said.

Erin Golden led Batavia with 15 points and 12 rebounds while Towers added 12 points.

"We can't get down on ourselves every time something goes wrong," Towers said. "I felt like that wasn't one of our best games that we played."

Torosian had 24 points, Orozco added 18 points and Emma Raupp and Katie Smith joined in the long-range fun with a 3-pointer apiece and 5 points each, respectively.

Earlier, Geneva used an 11-0 run in the third quarter to break open its game against Buffalo Grove, winning 58-48.

"I love that run," Vikings coach Sarah Meadows said. "Our kids came out ready, the press got some steals and deflections, some putbacks and we scored off that and in our half-court offense and forced them to change defenses."

Lindsay Blackmore led the Vikings (13-5) with 22 points and Kate Palmer added 15 points and acknowledged that coming off a loss to Lake Park, the Vikings weren't satisfied with a 31-22 halftime lead.

"We definitely wanted to come out stronger in the third quarter and build that lead," Palmer said. "We knew we needed to win this after losing our last game. We had a bad couple of games where we didn't start well."

Buffalo Grove (13-9) struggled through some poor spurts of play, including late in the first quarter and especially to begin the second half.

"We were chasing after that absolute terrible start to the third quarter," Buffalo Grove coach Stephen Kolodziej said. "We lost them in transition. They like to push the ball and got some easy ones so they came out and smacked us pretty good."

Macy Floro led the Bison with 18 points and Kendra Lee chipped in with 16 points.

"We're competing to win our conference and we hope to win a regional and maybe a sectional," Kolidziej said. "To be the best you've got to play the best and this was a good opportunity to play them and we'll learn from this and move on."